Composite Restorations

The first half of the semester, we've been doing composite preps (AKA drilling the hole for white-colored fillings), but as of two weeks ago, we started restoring (filling the hole) and it is so much fun! I totally love it.  Way more fun and prettier than amalgam (metal fillings).

This is before:

Prep (drilled) on the two middle extracted teeth (class II).
Notice the caries on the 3rd tooth (black rotten spot)

This is after:

Composite Restorations (tooth-colored fillings) - Lingual view

Occlusal view

And here's one more tooth:

Before: Note the decalcification on the middle tooth (white lines)

During: Cut it down to imitate a fracture (class IV)

After: Then built it back up - no more white lines!
(My mesial contact is too narrow.)

Isn't dentistry so cool?
I'm so blessed to be studying and doing what I love.
God, you da best.

Wax-Ups

Since this blog is sweet TOOTH, I figured it was time for some dental school pictures!

For our Morphology/Occlusion class, we have to "wax-up" different teeth.
Basically, we made a stone model of teeth.  Then we shave a tooth down to nothing and then build it back up using wax and instruments!

We had already done this tooth (#14 - upper left 1st molar) so we had to cut it off and do it again.

Goodbye wax.

Starting again from scratch.

I liked my wax-up, so I preserved it.  Onto the next one.

1. Build up with big blob first

3. Triangular/Cusp Ridges

2. Add cones for the cusps

4. More ridges & Fill-in

5. Clean up and polish!

yay.  I love dentistry.